When it comes to business growth, generating new customers is only a small aspect of the entire picture. The other part, which few people talk about, is the effort you need to make to nurture these people to create and improve customer relationships that can last for a lifetime.
The advent of social media has changed plenty of things, and one of them is the relationships customers and businesses have with each other. Social media platforms are seen as real-time feedback and communication options, so it requires you to do much more than the simple conversion of a lead into a customer.
You will need to create strong relationships with your audiences so that they can return more frequently and assist in your brand marketing efforts. This is similar to the effect you would get when likes from real Instagrammers show up in your profile posts, showing you about your impact. There are few strategies as effective as a word-of-mouth marketing system when it keeps the excitement about your brand running and creating brand loyalty.
6 Tips to create and enhance customer relationships on social media
1. Create exclusive customer service social media channels
A major way of starting on the relationship-building process on social media is creating a dedicated channel, which you can accomplish in two ways: creating a Twitter account that specifically handles customer service requests and informing your audiences about product resolutions and issues. The other method is creating a support page on your website or adding an option to the Facebook Messenger chatbot.
Regardless of the method, ensure its response times are excellent and helpful, as this will help create a good brand reputation.
2. Social listening
This is the process of finding mentions of your brand or checking for related topics online through monitoring specific keywords and topics.
You can utilize this method through social media management platforms, which will give you quick summaries of what people are talking about concerning your industry, brand, or other related topics. This will then help you craft messages and campaigns, or improve on the ones you have to give your audiences better information.
You can also utilize the knowledge to create learning resources, new features, and blog posts that your audience wants, which ultimately increases engagement.
3. Customer feedback is essential: do something about it
It is one thing for your customers to give you feedback, and it is another thing to do something with the information. Always show your audiences that you value their feedback, and you are willing to implement projects with it.
Regardless of whether this is in the form of a new software feature or a new product or service launch, your customers will feel that you value them when you incorporate their feedback into improvements – it will also enhance their brand loyalty and trust. It will tell them that you hear their needs and concerns, and are willing to act on them to improve your business.
4. Consider personalizing the customer experience
Personalization is an excellent way of enhancing and creating customer relationships. For instance, you can consider answering customer questions by adding a Live Chat option or widget on your website, which connects the customer to an actual support agent.
Another method is through ensuring email newsletters and social media interactions include the first name of the recipient, which makes the messages more personal to them.
5. Making your brand voice seem relatable
Some of the strongest relationships you have all center around relatability. Whether it is your favorite content creators, businesses, or celebrities – and your brand works the same way. Social media needs to be fun; although you are not casual with your audience, you need to allow them to enjoy your presence by creating a relatable brand voice.
There are various ways you can do this, such as using the current lingo of your target audience, sharing memes and user-generated content, or other pop culture references. In case you need ideas, you can check out other brands and see if their implementation sparks your unique spin.
6. Incentives
No one hates free stuff – and that is why giveaways and contests are tried-and-true ways of boosting your brand. Such measures include hosting a flash sale for a set time and giving discount codes or freebies to your followers.
If you are ready to increase your brand engagements and build strong relationships with your audience, you can start with these tips above and improve your brand’s presence on social media.